Abstract

We present a method for Cartesian workspace control of a robot manipulator that
enforces joint-level acceleration, velocity, and position constraints using linear
optimization. This method is robust to kinematic singularities. On redundant manipulators,
we avoid poor configurations near joint limits by including a maximum permissible velocity
term to center each joint within its limits. Compared to the baseline Jacobian damped
least-squares method of workspace control, this new approach honors kinematic limits,
ensuring physically realizable control inputs and providing smoother motion of the robot. We
demonstrate our method on simulated redundant and non-redundant manipulators and implement
it on the physical 7-degree-of-freedom Baxter manipulator. We provide our control software
under a permissive license.